Rescue Me: Greenpoint brownfield site gets a cleanup – and a new apartment building

Rescue Me: Greenpoint brownfield site gets a cleanup – and a new apartment building

An apartment building is rising on this cleaned-up brownfield site at 1133 Manhattan Ave. Photo by Lore Croghan

Eye On Real Estate

By Lore Croghan

Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Once upon a time, 1133 Manhattan Ave. was the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Rail Yard, one of Greenpoint's polluted properties.

Then it was deemed a brownfield site – and was included in a state Department of Environmental Conservation program that offers private developers tax credits for cleaning up places possibly contaminated by hazardous wastes or petroleum, or both.

A developer, the Domain Cos., got to work cleaning it up – a prelude to building a big apartment house.

There was petroleum contamination from stored fuel oil, along with other contaminants in the soil, Domain principal Matt Schwartz told Eye on Real Estate. Primary remediation work took about a month. Over the course of a year, during foundation work, sullied soil was removed.

The developer did a full-on “Track 1” soil cleanup – the state Brownfield Cleanup Program's designation for the highest level of work, which means that the property can be used for any purpose, he said.

Domain deployed Environmental Business Consultants as a consultant. Law firm Phillips Nizer was its environmental counsel.

The developer signed a 99-year lease for the property in September 2011, renting it from a neighboring business, M. Hiller and Son, which has owned it since 1977, city Finance Department records indicate.

The $67 million construction project is going full speed ahead, with the walls of the 210-unit rental building rising six floors above Box Street. The property, designed by architect Perkins Eastman, also has frontage on Clay Street.

Half the apartments will be market-rate rentals, 30% will be income-restricted for middle-income tenants and 20% will be solely for low-income tenants.

Domain is the co-owner of Spring Creek Gardens, an affordable-housing complex in East New York, and the developer of Long Island City's One Hunters Point condo project as well as numerous properties in Louisiana.